unfortunately this is just too true!
Given the current speculative wave, a large majority of investors in the space are out to make money for themselves. They could care less about the potential of the technology to solve real-world problems and give meaning to people's lives. They care more about the bottom line and profitability.
But I don't think bots are the problem here. The annoying and detrimental bots don't make it to much. The spam-machines and phishing propagation do get flagged pretty often.
The Vote-selling-bots imho are actually something that could help the platform spread out it's proof-of-brain-stake reasonably if the (human) operators had some sense of responsibility for the platform and did more to prevent rampant abuse and overuse...
The problem is really a human problem, and "bots" are just used to further those human intentions.
I still think the paradigm that has been set in an ecosystem where social-networking and blockchain-coinage meet holds huge promises.
But we do need a bit of a grassroots revolution and some whales to wake up if we want to prevent the demise you so reasonably expect.
The biggest issue with a grassroots revolution is how does one start it when the only ones who want change are all separated and hidden from each other? And they will only have enough power if they band together. Even then, we still might need whale help.
well... it's not like there are no whales that fight the good fight... albeit those are often using questionable method of their own...
I think it will forever be an evolving process that gets adjusted over and over... the platform has some leeway for the shifting collective conscience on the platform.
I am not sure if we are just having growth pains or if this thing is already mushrooming and about to tip over... but I do not think it's a lost cause yet!
hey... we just found each other... look at all these thoughtful comments on your post... you clearly struck a nerve here... we just need to keep building!
I think this is a good point, and not many people are realizing that we have already been changing the bot-shaped landscape. If you compare trending to what it was a couple months back you would certainly have seen a marked improvement because you have bot operators taking a stand and operating blacklists.
Also note that before bots, trending was just a whale circle jerk. Now it's more varied. But of course, there could be even more improvements...
exactly! I think voting bots do show a "constructive" force here, both in terms of discovery and in terms of reward distribution... albeit... a properly functioning "promoted" feature would still be much much better for the platform.
Or not? I mean there are some pretty obvious excessive vote-buyers who pretty much don't care for anything other than those paid votes and their returns...
But yes, that's exactly where the factor of responsibility come into play. I think questionable initiatives like the @grumpycat have been able to coerce some operators into improving their services to be more "healthy" for the platform.
I don't think it's a lost cause at all, but it will be critical to the further viability of the platform to further improve and iterate... there will probably never be the one set of rules to govern well for ever, so we'll just need to keep nagging and improving...